This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

Supporting a woman in prison who stabbed her violent boyfriend

Success story

The husband of a woman in prison contacted us for help. They had separated after she met another man and went to live with him, but her new boyfriend was continuously violent to her. His attacks included rape and sexual assaults, stabbing her in the chest and putting a loaded air rifle in her mouth. On several occasions the police brought her back to the marital home after being called. Eventually she stabbed her boyfriend after he attacked her yet again with a knife – he survived the stabbing and was awarded substantial criminal injuries compensation. Her lawyer did not argue it was self-defence at trial or call her to testify. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison, reduced to nine years on appeal, and was sent to high-security prison alongside murderers. We found her a solicitor and a barrister to investigate legal grounds for another appeal. We pressed for her compassionate treatment as a victim of violence herself and as the victim of a miscarriage of justice. For example, we established with the prison that we could meet with her privately, whereas usually a prison officer is present. We supported her request for a transfer from high-security prison to open prison, and nearer to her family so that they could visit more often. We supported her family outside in practical ways. It is shocking that children are denied extra children’s visits to their mothers in prison once they reach their 12th birthday, and have to apply for visiting orders on the same basis as adults. Sadly, her husband died without seeing her released from prison.